Ghost Moons: Astronomers Confirm Unusual Find

[Bystander]

Might belong in Astro, but I'm going to start it here;

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018...lloween-ghost-moons-confirmed-by-astronomers/

 

[jedishrfu]

Here's a Weather Channel video on it:

https://weather.com/news/trending/video/two-big-clouds-of-dust-orbit-earth-like-ghost-moons/

 

[Bystander]

Weather Channel video

You see why I chose to post this in Gen. Disc.? Weather Channel doesn't seem to be aware of the solar wind; perhaps it's a statistical effect centered at the Lagrange points, residence times of specific particles being immaterial?

 

[jedishrfu]

You see why I chose to post this in Gen. Disc.? Weather Channel doesn't seem to be aware of the solar wind; perhaps it's a statistical effect centered at the Lagrange points, residence times of specific particles being immaterial?

Have they flown anything by the ghost moon area to see what's actually there?

 

[Bystander]

Re-"Googled" and got the following, https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/ghost-moons-discovered-orbit-around-earth-ncna930031 , which includes size (tens of thousands of miles/kilometers), lifetime (decades/transient), and age estimate (since sixties).

 

[dlgoff]

Astronomers says they’ve confirmed the existence of two big clouds of interplanetary dust that orbit the Earth at the same distance as the moon.

bold by me

So just how massive are these clouds?

 

[Bystander]

how massive

At these distances and "argued/arguable" existence? Not very.

 

[256bits]

Interesting stuff
Searched for "Kordylewski clouds"

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/482/1/762/5114270
https://amazience.com/the-kordylewski-clouds/

very faint, and wispy, but

They are very difficult to observe from Earth but may be visible to the unaided eye in an exceptionally dark and clear night sky. More claimed observations have been made from deserts, at sea, or from mountains. The clouds appear somewhat redder than the gegenschein,

but of coarse where is the documentation for such observations if it was actually the clouds the |people" were witnessing.

 

[Bystander]

very faint, and wispy,

"Thin, watery, watery, watery."

 

[Bystander]

Searched for "Kordylewski clouds"

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/482/1/762/5114270

For @dlgoff , "The Japanese Hiten space probe (using the Munich Dust Counter, an impact ionization detector designed to determine mass and velocity of cosmic dust) has passed through the L4 and L5 points of the Earth and Moon system, but did not find an obvious increase in dust concentration compared to the surrounding space (Igenbergs et al. 2012)." ; from the discussion section.

 

[mjc123]

I notice the link in #1 illustrates with a diagram of the LaGrangian [sic] points in the Sun-Earth system. Typical of pop-science journalism?

 

[Bystander]

Typical of pop-science journalism?

Veerrryyyy much so.

 

[dlgoff]

For @dlgoff , "The Japanese Hiten space probe (using the Munich Dust Counter, an impact ionization detector designed to determine mass and velocity of cosmic dust) has passed through the L4 and L5 points of the Earth and Moon system, but did not find an obvious increase in dust concentration compared to the surrounding space (Igenbergs et al. 2012)." ; from the discussion section.

That pretty much tells me it's BS. IMO

 

[256bits]

I notice the link in #1 illustrates with a diagram of the LaGrangian [sic] points in the Sun-Earth system. Typical of pop-science journalism?

Especially when the earth-moon system is the discussion for the clouds.
Nevertheless,
earth-sun system has
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_TK7

The Sun–Earth L4 and L5 points contain interplanetary dust and at least one asteroid, 2010 TK7, detected in October 2010 by Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and announced during July 2011

2010 TK7 is a sub-kilometer near-Earth asteroid and the first Earth trojan discovered; it precedes Earth in its orbit around the Sun.[5][6] Trojan objects are most easily conceived as orbiting at a Lagrangian point, a dynamically stable location (where the combined gravitational force acts through the Sun's and Earth's barycenter) 60 degrees ahead of or behind a massive orbiting body, in a type of 1:1 orbital resonance. In reality, they oscillate (librate) around such a point. Such objects had previously been observed in the orbits of Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, and the Saturnian moons Tethys and Dione.

2010 TK7 has a diameter of about 300 meters (1,000 ft).[4] Its path oscillates about the Sun–Earth L4 Lagrangian point (60 degrees ahead of Earth), shuttling between its closest approach to Earth and its closest approach to the L3 point (180 degrees from Earth).

The asteroid was discovered in October 2010 by the NEOWISE team of astronomers using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).[7]

If the "clouds" act similar to 2010 TK7, the "act as" being a supposition open to interpretation, the clouds would not be found at the designated earth-moon L point at all times. The clouds are not a rigid body, the dust having most likely a time of residence, ( which could effect a formation and breakup of the cloud ), the L4 and L5 rotate around the Earth and this would subject them to the sun's influence; all this and more I would think have the clouds having a "here today, gone tomorrow" type of life - a transient type of "object" difficult to verify as having an existence.